If you’re reading this blog, I assume you’re a descendant of Penelope and Richard Stout and are familiar with her story and want to know more. I would love to discover the truth behind Penelope’s story but facts are scarce. I'll have to settle for conjectures.

Together, we can combine our incomplete knowledge and arrive at better conclusions. So please comment.

........ Conjecture, noun, the formation of judgments or opinions on the basis of incomplete or inconclusive information. Source: Encarta Dictionary

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

A Summary of What's Known about Penelope

Last week I listed the major sources of the stories about
Penelope. Combining all threads produces the following summary of what we know
about Penelope:

Penelope (whose
maiden name was possibly Kent or Lent or Thompson or Thomson or vanPrincis or
vanPrinces or vanPrincen or vanPrincess or van Prince or van Printzen) was born
probably in the 1620s in either England or Holland to unknown parents who were
either English or Dutch. Rumors suggest her father was a minister. In the 1640s
at approximately 20 years of age, Penelope married either an Englishman or a
Dutchman (whose name was probably Kent or Prince or vanPrince or vanPrincis or
vanPrinces or vanPrincess or van Prince or van Printzen) probably in Amsterdam.
Soon thereafter they sailed on a ship (name unknown) from Amsterdam to the
Dutch West Indies colony of New Amsterdam possibly by way of the Caribbean
island of Curacao.

Sometime in the 1640s somewhere in the Sandy Hook area of
Raritan Bay (in what is now Monmouth County, NJ), Penelope’s ship (which might
have the Kath/Kat/Cat/Cath which sank in 1648, returning from Curacao with a cargo
of salt) ran aground or capsized in a storm or sank. Everyone except Penelope
perished in the incident or else everyone except Penelope was killed by Indians
after surviving the wreck or else everyone safely made it to shore except
Penelope’s husband who was either injured in the wreck or had been sick on the
voyage. If other passengers and crew survived the incident, they hiked to New
Amsterdam, but Penelope refused to abandon her husband, who was too sick or
injured to travel.

After the wreck, Indians attacked whoever was still
there on the beach. If Penelope’s husband survived the wreck, the Indians
killed him. The Indians mutilated Penelope (head injury and/or shoulder injury
and/or partially disemboweled and/or scalped), and left her for dead. She
managed to crawl into a hollow log or tree for protection and survived on the
fungus growing on the rotten wood.

Later (perhaps a week), one or two Indians possibly
with a dog were on the beach. Possibly they wounded a deer, which ran by
Penelope’s log/tree with an arrow sticking out of it. Penelope called to the
Indians to put her out of her misery. The young Indian (assuming there were
two) was anxious to do so, but the older one prevailed. The older Indian
carried the wounded white woman to his village near where the town of
Middletown now stands. She recovered from her injuries.

Either Penelope lived with the Indians for many years,
or else she escaped in a canoe, or else white men heard of her presence and
rescued her, or else the old Indian delivered her to New Amsterdam for a
ransom.

On 12 Sep 1648 (our only reliable date) in Gravesend,
Long Island, colony of New Netherland, Pennellopy Prince testified in a slander
trial about one woman milking another woman’s cow.

Penelope married
Richard Stout, an early settler of Gravesend (on Long Island near Coney Island), who may have been 40 years old
when they married in the 1640s (probably between 1642 and 1648). Richard was
likely from Nottinghamshire, England, likely left home after an argument with
his father possibly about a woman his father deemed unsuitable, and served in
the English navy (possibly involuntarily) for probably seven years before being
discharged in America (probably in New Amsterdam) about 1642. "Octoberr
13th, 1643, Richard Aestin, Ambrose Love [London?] and Richard Stout made declarations
that the crew of the Seven Stars and of the privateer landed at the farm of
Anthony Jansen, of Salee, in the Bay, and took off 200 pumpkins, and would have
carried away a lot of hogs from Coney Island had they not learned that they
belonged to Lady Moody."

Penelope and
Richard Stout had 10 children who lived to maturity and populated New Jersey.

At some point after marriage and by 1666 at the latest,
Penelope and Richard left Gravesend and (with other settlers) founded the town
of Middletown, NJ, near where the old Indian’s village was. At some point while
she had young children (probably near Middletown but possibly in Gravesend),
the old Indian warned Penelope that other Indians planned to attack her
settlement. She could not persuade her husband of the truth, so she took the
children away in a canoe (possibly provided by the old Indian). At her
departure, her husband decided to be prudent, gathered the other settlers, and
thwarted the attack before it occurred. Thereafter, the Indians and settlers
lived in peace.

Richard Stout died as an old man (probably around age
90), his will being probated in 1705. Penelope died probably between 1712 and
1732 at an old age, which some claim was 110 years, at which time she had 502
descendants. She was buried somewhere in the Middletown area. Her numerous
descendants recounted her adventures to their numerous descendants.

Penelope told her
great grandson John Stout to reach into her apron pocket and feel her abdominal
scar. John told this story to his granddaughter Helena Hoff, who told her
granddaughter Therese Walling.

I did a Google Book search on william bushnell stout penelope and found "So Away I Went," indeed a rather novel version of the traditional story featuring French maiden Penelope la Princess shipwrecked in Virginia.